MCI Academic Journal #10: Joyce and Postcolonial Literature

Another assigned writing topic concerned James Joyce and postcolonial literature. Frankly, without it, I'm not Joyce's work would be possible. His disgust with colonialism and how it has ravaged his country drive him away from home in effect. Joyce is like a drowning rat in Ireland, scratching and clawing his way through the sinking ships timber trying to escape a life of mediocrity and malaise in a postcolonial world.

Joyce, though a non-nationalist and a pacifist, would never have aligned himself with the Republicans who sought to toss the British out on their rears, he certainly would have applauded their efforts should they succeed. Joyce's utter rejection for Ireland, despite all his works being a product of the postcolonial period, are a direct by-product of the despair of the average Irishmen in a nihilistic environment fostered by the colonial oppression of the Irish.

I've noted on a number of occasions that although the Irish seem to walk in a cringe induced malaise, as if when bad things happen, a sigh and a shrug precede the utterance, "Yeah, it's Ireland." Ireland is that great uncle you love; he's funny witty and extremely talented at nearly anything he does, but the boy just can't catch a break. He seems vexed by life, and the flummoxing behavior he engages in is not purely his fault.

Joyce once wrote, "Ireland is a great country. They call it the Emerald Isle. The Metropolitan Government, after so many centuries, has reduced it to a spectre. Now it is a briar patch." He of course is blaming colonialism for the continuing cloud of corruption and incompetence. While there might be a number of sweet succulent berries in that briar patch, one would have to contend mightily with the numerous thorns in order to attain the reward. Joyce viewed the berries from afar; the thorns were just not worth the hassle.

Without these thorns in his way, perhaps Joyce would have never left Ireland, gaining the independence and freed from the confining and suffocating prison he had seen his native land become. When writing Dubliners, he is quoted as, “My intention is to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.”

But this is often the case with the great writers isn't it? Misunderstood in their own place and time, they emigrate to a distant locale to center themselves and write so lucidly about the very place they feel has choked their art and ambition. Hemmingway, Woolfe, Eliot, all sought an escape from what they deemed an inescapable coffin of creative corrosion. Some authors have even become so synonymous with their new homes, they lose identification as a denizen of their native land. Heck, I just found out Henry James was a Yank!

But escape as he tried, Joyce is clearly an Irish author. He may have left the Emerald Isle in body, but not in spirit, and wonderful pieces like "Abarat" and "The Dead" so consciously express. Could he have written "The Dead" set apart from his youth in a postcolonial time?

I doubt it.